THE WOOD FLOORS Sidebar Records Some Girls 10-song CD This is quite a sonic amalgam. I’m thinking of some Lou Reed with fuzzy Neil Young mixed with a big part of Dinosaur Jr. That’s the quickest, and probably best musical stylistic description I can give. Most songs have that intense understated mellow feel, like they’d be good soundtrack music for the film starring Tiger Woods in a fugitive-from–justice role. I picture Tiger driving the open road to these songs, rearview mirror showing the reflective look in his eyes, bag of rusted golf clubs in the back seat. He’s in a convertible. Don’t believe me; well you need to get this CD and listen, while thinking of my words written here. Just picture that knucklehead driving off into the sunset, to try to hustle a game at a dumpy 9-hole course, remembering all those women he popped. The wistful look in his eyes tells the story, man those were some girls. (Mike Loce)
The Wood Floors: Press
Dry White Heat is the nineteenth release from New Hampshire’s The Wood Floors, a band as prolific as they are unknown.
As the album progresses, the hooks get deeper and the progressions more recognizable. They’re not afraid to wear their influences up front - with “I’ve Seen That Film Before”'s jangly guitars mirroring the Afghan Whigs’ confessional opening to Gentleman, and the Guided By Voices homage paid in the atonal transition of “You Jumped Too Far” and “If You See Her.”
The album is layered with networks of fuzz and tremolo, borrowing as much from GBV at its most raw as it does My Bloody Valentine at its most polished. Song structures mirror Bee Thousand in their disregard for key and random acoustic outros, while the album jumps from angsty outbursts to dreamy pop bliss.
On “Feel the Revolution,” bass notes and folk chords jump between channels, recalling Phil Elverum’s production on The Glow Part II while airy vocals drip nostalgic for something unknown, floating through the melody and tearing at the heart. The song carries a gentle momentum that easily could have built to a triumphant bridge or chorus, but instead quietly fades into the abrupt opening of “Pretending to Lie,” creating a jarring, surreal moment of vague revelation. For what, I don’t know. Maybe it’s their revolution.
The Wood Floors aren’t afraid to spend three minutes building a progression only to drop it in favor of something new - they hit the hook and cut the rest. Just as “Inferior Complex” becomes almost too catchy to handle, it turns to the visceral release of “You Jumped Too Far,” which just as abruptly turns into “If you See Her.”
Dry White Heat ends with the title track, an ode to “Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer,” also from the Afghan Whig’s Gentleman, a sprawling, messy affair that tears through melodies with little regard for continuity or structure. And seeing as it’s longer than the previous five tracks combined, it’s fitting, and unexpected, closure. (self-released)
